I recently downloaded Calibre after reading that I could use it to catalog my books that are on my Kindle. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to do this. I am usually pretty computer savvy but find this supposedly easy software frustrating. I had been creating a spreadsheet to track my library of Kindle1 books but thought this would be easier. I understand Calibre's value as a format convertor but am just trying to get my Amazon books organized at this point. Can anybody help me?

@GRiker
Reading her post, perhaps she doesn't have the books anywhere but on the Kindle. I don't know enough about Kindles, DRM or even about the way ereaders interface to calibre to know what options there are to get them off the Kindle and into calibre. Will calibre read books off an ereader, or is it one way from calibre to the ereader?

Calibre will scan your connected eReader, which may take a few moments, especially if you have a lot of books. You will see the Jobs icon spin in the lower right corner. When calibre has scanned your eReader, you will see a Reader icon next to the library icon in the upper left of the interface.

In the top left of the interface is the 'Add books' icon, and a small down arrow in the lower right corner of that icon. Click the small down arrow, then select 'Add books from a single directory'.

In the dialog that is shown, select the documents folder of your connected Kindle.

In the Enable dropdown list, select MOBI Books (*.mobi *.prc *.azw)

From the eBooks loaded on your Kindle, select those you want added to calibre.

Click 'Open', and calibre will load those books into your calibre library.

At this point it would be a good idea to review the books you've added, editing titles and authors to taste. You can also add metadata like covers, descriptions and tags.

You will also want to set your Preferences:

Open the Preferences dialog by clicking the Hammer icon at the right end of the tool bar.

General: Preferred output format: MOBI

Conversion-Look and feel: Remove spacing between paragraphs

Conversion-Page setup: Output profile: set to 'Kindle' or 'Kindle DX'

Conversion-MOBI output: Do not add Table of Contents to book
Use author sort for author

That should get you started.

General note about loading Amazon books into calibre: Some people prefer what is called 'side-loading', where you download the Kindle book from Amazon to your computer. You then add that eBook to calibre - you can use drag 'n drop - then you can send it to your connected Kindle from calibre. This has the added benefit of creating a backup of your Amazon eBook on your computer, and doesn't require the use of Whispernet.